The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

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Re: Does this new proposal solve tanking for draft picks???

Honestly, I don't think there is a single scenario that will make everyone happy. The ultimate goal should be parity. I think in order to do so you have to first install a hard cap. There is no paying extra to go over it, you have to stay within the cap... no and, ifs, or buts. I like the idea of no guaranteed contracts like the NFL too. If a team wants to cut a player they can do so to wipe them off the salary cap; however, they must pay the final year of their contract. This would give teams a chance to get out from under bad contracts if the player doesn’t live up to their paycheck. If I was performing badly I would be fired, why is that not the case in professional sports?

If the ultimate goal is parity, then the NBA needs to make LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Chris Paul, and Paul George rotate teams every year.

UncleBuck:

"See how stupid those fans sound complaining about the officials. That is one reason why I hate when Pacers fans complain about the refs - does not come across well at all, no matter the merit. "

Re: Does this new proposal solve tanking for draft picks???

Honestly, I don't think there is a single scenario that will make everyone happy. The ultimate goal should be parity. I think in order to do so you have to first install a hard cap. There is no paying extra to go over it, you have to stay within the cap... no and, ifs, or buts. I like the idea of no guaranteed contracts like the NFL too. If a team wants to cut a player they can do so to wipe them off the salary cap; however, they must pay the final year of their contract. This would give teams a chance to get out from under bad contracts if the player doesn’t live up to their paycheck. If I was performing badly I would be fired, why is that not the case in professional sports?

Because you aren't as valuable at your job as nba players are at theirs. If you were, you'd get a better contract.

This may come as a total shock, but there are other professionals out there that get guaranteed contracts outside of sports.

BTW, most nfl contracts are partially guaranteed. They just get all of that money up front as a signing bonus.

Last edited by Kstat; 12-23-2013 at 05:17 PM.

It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

Golden State's pick that year was top 7 protected or was going to go to Utah, Golden State lost a ton of games in a row to end the season, and managed to get pick 7 to keep it.

"It's just unfortunate that we've been penalized so much this year and nothing has happened to the Pistons, the Palace or the city of Detroit," he said. "It's almost like it's always our fault. The league knows it. They should be ashamed of themselves to let the security be as lax as it is around here."

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

"It's just unfortunate that we've been penalized so much this year and nothing has happened to the Pistons, the Palace or the city of Detroit," he said. "It's almost like it's always our fault. The league knows it. They should be ashamed of themselves to let the security be as lax as it is around here."

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Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

To the people complaining about the champion having the #1 pick, that means they are being rewarded for building a championship level team without having the #1 pick in 29 years.

This is just like money. If you give everybody 1 million dollars and wait three years, the previously poor people will be poor again and the previously rich people will be even richer. The good teams are going to be good no matter what picks they get.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

I nominate the Pistons.

The poster "pacertom" since this forum began (and before!). I changed my name here to "Slick Pinkham" in honor of the imaginary player That Bobby "Slick" Leonard picked late in the 1971 ABA draft (true story!)

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Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

The wheel would lead to the big market teams getting the best players for TV Ad Revenue.

Just look at who plays on Christmas. Big markets and the last two teams in the finals:
Chicago
Two New York teams (Nets & Knicks)
Two LA teams (Clippers & Lakers)
Miami (finals)
OKC (finals)
Golden State
Two Texas (most populous state) teams (Spurs & Rockets)

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

This would kill the league. Tanking is really not that bad. If tanking was such a big deal then Brooklyn and New York would be in the playoffs and Boston and Toronto would have the worst records in the league.

Is this sarcasm?

Tanking makes for uncompetitive, unwatchable basketball. I don't care how successful it is. It needs to be stopped.

How would this kill the league? That is the most insane, hyperbolic thing I've read all year.

How many no-brainer #1 pick superstars have we had since the turn of the century? Lebron, rose, and....who? Howard wasn't a no-brainer franchise prospect by any means. Wall and Griffin were top picks but neither guy is a superstar. Would them sacrificing a year of nba salary and risking injury to play for the team of their choice "kill the league?" Please.

Basically, we've had two guys over the last 14 drafts that might irk people by playing another year in college to go to another market. And you want to scrap this idea, which promotes good basketball, which holds GMs accountable for putting a quality product on the floor for the fans who pay money to watch their team play, because of the 1/7 odds that a truly franchise-changing #1 pick might be arrogant enough to snub some poor small market? Holy **** get a grip on reality!

And how many prospects are that good, that they know with confidence that they are not only the best player in their HS class, but the next one as well?

Would John wall stay another year at Kentucky to go to a different team, knowing kyrie Irving would be eligible the following season? Would he even go first? What if he got hurt? Why even take that risk?

Last edited by Kstat; 12-24-2013 at 07:38 AM.

It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

Oh, and while we're on that subject, I'm glad some of you think so little of Paul George that you have to handcuff him to Indiana by any means, because if he had the choice, you think he'd sacrifice a year of NBA salary just to leave Indiana for New York or LA.

Really talented NBA players are all alike, apparently. They all want to be Lakers or Knicks...god forbid they just want to have good NBA careers for a good franchise. Let's judge every future prospect for the rest of time.

You know what REALLY "kills" the NBA? This:

There is something seriously wrong with your product when your customer base is openly rooting for you to lose, while not buying tickets.

Last edited by Kstat; 12-24-2013 at 06:33 AM.

It wasn't about being the team everyone loved, it was about beating the teams everyone else loved.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

I don't mind it as an idea, I mean yes you'd have to wait 30 years for a #1 pick but when you consider you'd also be getting a 2, 3, 4 at regular intervals, etc, I think it definitely evens out.

I'll admit there's part of me that, on principal doesn't like the draft at all. If you're supremely talented at what you do you should get to decide where you work. Can you imagine a bright, young, promising lawyer being forced to work at an extremely poorly run firm?

And I don't buy that tanking isn't a driving factor in why the east has only 3 teams over .500 at the moment. The NBA is supposed to be about putting the top players in the best teams in the world on the floor. We have teams that are bad by design, and that's practically criminal given the sort of money being invested in these teams.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

Yeah, I've grown on this idea. I like teams getting a chance at good picks every so often no matter how bad/good they are. It also simplifies trades where it says a 2014, or 2015 first rounder or something lottery protected and all that nonsense. I think the 2nd round you could do based on records for the current season, if someone really wants to justify tanking for slot 31 then go ahead.

I mean the Spurs haven't had a chance at drafting a really good player in quite a while early, and the newest piece they got, Kawhi, was because of the Pacers luck being where he was, and them having George Hill expendable. People always say how great the Spurs front office has been and I agree with that, but it would be interesting to see how they do with a higher pick.

Every 30 years you'd have the most interesting day in NBA for a while determining the order for the drafts ahead. A crappy team atm may decide to take a more rounded set of picks to build, while a team one piece short decides to go for the highest pick possible for one year and drop off after that. I really do like the idea even now typing and thinking more about it. I'd almost prefer it if teams couldn't trade their picks until after they made them but sweetener is needed sometimes to make the right deal.

"It's just unfortunate that we've been penalized so much this year and nothing has happened to the Pistons, the Palace or the city of Detroit," he said. "It's almost like it's always our fault. The league knows it. They should be ashamed of themselves to let the security be as lax as it is around here."

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Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

I had a thought on an alternative to the lottery.

It's a little bit like how the non-starter all-stars are selected by the coaches.

For all 30 teams, their franchise's powers that be (Owner/President/GM/etc. collaboratively) rank the other 29 NBA teams, from most in need of a top pick down to the least in need. Each franchise sends their ranking to league head quarters, where the NBA averages the results from all 30 rankings to determine THE final ranking from 1 through 30, and there's your draft order for that June. No lottery, no tanking, no luck, accounts for flukes where one team was only bad because the superstar broke his foot in December or something, identifies teams that truly need it the most. The only concern would be conspiracy, but if that's the first or only thing to counter argue it... on the surface, I think this could be pretty solid, actually.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

Some great debate in this thread. I'm a fan of the wheel, but I think that is biased by the Pacers being a well-run franchise. I also like it because I'm a fan of not rewarding incompetence. Having said that, if everything else is equal, it does provide an advantage to the more desirable free agent destinations, such as Texas, Florida, New York, LA, and Chicago, because if the draft is a level playing field, and trades are a level playing field, the ability to avoid paying state income tax or dramatically increasing your non-basketball income are a draw. This system puts more of a value on your GM, so we might see the GM salaries skyrocket, which would also be an advantage for NY and LA, as they could just offer a guy like Daryl Morey or Ujiri $10m per year or more.

As has been stated, this would also be a problem in that the college prospects would have more control over their own destiny. However, that could be fixed as well. My initial thought is to make all players draft eligible when they hit 19, the same way the current system does, but get rid of the "declaring" portion. This way, an Anthony Davis could elect to stay another year in school, but New Orleans could still select him and have his draft rights. That does present some goofy, old-school Larry Bird shenanigans where teams use their second round pick to draft guys after their freshman year with plans on stashing them until they're ready, and the player's union would have a fit, but I do think there's some way to avoid players playing an extra year of school to get to a big market. Then again, that may be a non-issue, when you factor the risk of injury and the time value of money.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

It's a little bit like how the non-starter all-stars are selected by the coaches.

For all 30 teams, their franchise's powers that be (Owner/President/GM/etc. collaboratively) rank the other 29 NBA teams, from most in need of a top pick down to the least in need. Each franchise sends their ranking to league head quarters, where the NBA averages the results from all 30 rankings to determine THE final raking from 1 through 30, and there's your draft order for that June. No lottery, no tanking, no luck, accounts for flukes where one team was only bad because the superstar broke his foot in December or something, identifies teams that truly need it the most. The only concern would be conspiracy, but if that's the first or only thing to counter argue it... on the surface, I think this could be pretty solid, actually.

The problem would be that as a Pacer fan the obvious thing would be to put Miami, and other rivals, dead last. Or there could be personal vendettas that owners/gms hold against other individuals. I think that would only fuel the conspiracy theories.

Re: The NBA's Possible Solution for Tanking: Good-bye to the Lottery, Hello to the Wheel

The problem would be that as a Pacer fan the obvious thing would be to put Miami, and other rivals, dead last. Or there could be personal vendettas that owners/gms hold against other individuals. I think that would only fuel the conspiracy theories.

But each team has equal say, and there's only going to be so many teams doing that, if you even believe they're so petty as to do so. Plus the league can always call BS on someone who is doing that and say "call us back with your real list".